The premise of division and co-optation is to first determine who is the main enemy of the Taiping army and who is the secondary enemy. Undoubtedly, the Manchurians were the main enemies of the Taiping army and even the Han people in the whole world. The relationship between the two is life and death, and any compromise with the Manchus is a betrayal of the Han Chinese. Therefore, for Manchuria, the primary enemy, what the Taiping army had to do was to strike hard, eliminate it, and eliminate it mercilessly.

As for the Mongols, it is possible to pull together a little when it comes to striking. The propaganda slogan put forward by the Manchu Qing was "Manchu and Mongolian family", but this slogan was actually just the words of the Manchurian family. According to the confession of the Mongolian Eight Banners Gushan Ezhen Su Rile and others who surrendered to the Taiping Army, only the Mongols and Manchurians of the Eight Banners of Mongolia are truly one, this is because the Mongolian Eight Banners are all small Mongolian tribes that took the initiative to attach to Manchukuo or were conquered by Manchu in the early years of the Jin Dynasty. The most obvious evidence of this is that the Mongols of the Eight Banners of Mongolia shaved their hair and grew braids, while the Mongols of the Non-Eight Banners did not.

The ancestor of Surile was the small Mongolian tribe of Beizi Quarku, who led more than 300 tribes to Nurhachi at that time, and was the first Mongol to be incorporated into the Mongolian military banner. Among the Mongolian tribes outside the Guanguan, only the southern Mongolian tribes, such as Horqin, had a close relationship with the Manchurians, and the relationship between the other Mongolian tribes and the Manchus was limited to cooperative relations. In other words, they were partners in a robbery, and the Manchus were not able to exercise effective command over the Mongol tribes. The former rulers of Southern Mongolia, the Chahar tribe, were also extremely hostile to the Manchurians.

The original Great Khan of the Chahar Department is the direct heir of the Golden Family, Lin Dan Khan, but unfortunately he died of pox in the eighth year of the Later Jin Tiancong, and then his wife Empress Dowager Su Tai and his son Ezhe led the troops to surrender to the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and the Qing court organized his troops into six banners and awarded him as the prince to lead the people. After Ezhe's death due to illness, his younger brother Abnai became the prince. However, unlike his brother's obedience to the Manchus, Abunai was always resentful of the shame of his ancestors, and always had the desire to revive the Great Mongolia in his heart, and was unwilling to be ruled by the Manchus, so after he succeeded his brother as the prince of Chahar, he did not meet Shunzhi in Beijing for many years, and the Qing court dismissed him and imprisoned him in Shengjing.

Abnai had two sons, the eldest son, Burni, and the second son, Lobuzang. After Abnei was imprisoned in Shengjing, the Qing court made his eldest son, Burni, his prince, but Burni was equally reluctant to submit to the Manchus in the same attitude as his father. Due to the imprisonment of his father Abney, Burnni's hatred of the Qing Dynasty deepened, and he has been plotting against the Qing Dynasty to rescue his father and lead his people to revive the glory of Greater Mongolia. The Qing court knew this, but because the remnants of the Ming Dynasty in the south had not been pacified, it had not been able to free up its hands to solve Bulni, and could only rely on the close Horqin and other departments to monitor and contain the Chahar department.

During the Shunzhi period, Mongolia was divided into Inner and Outer Mongolia, Inner Mongolia referred to Monan Horqin and other departments, and Outer Mongolia referred to Mobei Junggar and Moxi Erut. As for Inner Mongolia and other tribes, because of the long-term practice of intermarriage since Nurhachi, and relying on it to act as the vanguard of the massacre of the Han Chinese, the Qing court took good care of them and tried every means to plunder the interests of the Han people and share them with them. However, they ignored the various ministries of foreign Mongolia and used them as cannon fodder and slaves.

Not only that, but in order to avoid the growth of the Mongol tribes, the Manchu Qing used Lamaism to rule Mongolia, stipulating that if there were eight brothers, seven of them must be lamas; If there are five brothers, four of them must be lamas; Only one commoner can marry a wife and have children. In this way, Mongolian women did not have the blessing of being lamas, but it was difficult to find a comparable spouse, so they all became the objects of Manchurian desires. This naturally made the Outer Mongolian tribes more hostile to Manchuria, and they were unwilling to pay tribute to the Qing court.

The apparent discord between the Mongols and the Manchus, as well as the fact that many tribes were not allies of the Manchus, naturally led the Zhou Shixiang to adjust their strategy toward the Mongols. The enemy of the enemy is the friend, and even if the friend is still the enemy of the Han people in essence, it is still possible to temporarily win over the friend before the common enemy Manchu is eliminated.

The number of the Eight Banners of the Mongolian Eight Banners in the Qing army in the southwest was about 30,000, including thousands of Mongolian soldiers from other countries. Whether it is the Mongolian soldiers, the Mongolian Eight Banners, or Zhou Shixiang all have the same attitude, cooperation can be hand in hand, and if you don't cooperate, you will be killed. The cooperation between the Taiping army and the Mongols has a natural advantage, that is, the Taiping army has nearly 4,000 Mongol soldiers, and these people will play a certain role in dividing the Mongol army in the Qing army now and in the future.

As for the Han army and the green battalion, given that these people were originally Han Chinese, and most of them were once officers and soldiers of the Ming Dynasty, Zhou Shixiang thought that he could give them a new path. In other words, for Han military leaders such as Line Guoan and Wu Sangui, Zhou Shixiang actually wanted to win them over. If the Han soldiers, who accounted for more than seventy percent of the Qing army in the southwest, turned around and bit the remaining two percent of the Manchu and Mongolian Qing troops, the Manchus could be said to have died if they did not die.

Zhou Shixiang did not give Shao Jiugong a strict order to annihilate the line of national security, as long as he can delay the line of national security, the reason is this. And if he wants to be able to fight against the country, the premise is that he can't see that the Qing army in the southwest will win, or there is a possibility of getting out of trouble.

Zhou Shixiang was preparing to attack Luo Keduo, the king of Pingjun of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, in Yuanzhou, and once Luo Keduo was completely annihilated, most of the lone line Guoan would have to consider the future of himself and his subordinates. Luo Keduo was defeated, and the lintel of the line Guoan was changed again, and Wu Sangui, the king of Pingxi in Yunnan, and the Ming army who surrendered were afraid that they would become the object of nightmares for Doni, the commander of the Qing army. Even Shunzhi, who was far away in Beijing, was afraid that he would wake up in the middle of the night, so as to consider whether to send an envoy to discuss the matter of dividing the river and ruling with the thief Xiucai.

However, things will not always go according to the script envisioned by Zhou Shixiang, and Line Guoan is a general who does not play according to the routine. In other words, Line Guoan is a good general, and he has the qualifications to not follow the script.

In the first battle of Dushan Prefecture, the annihilation of the 11th town of the light enemy caused the war in Guangxi to go in an unpredictable direction from the beginning. After receiving the news of the defeat of Gao Jinku in the eleventh town, Zhao Ziqiang of the fifth town made a bad mistake in the green camp in the past, he did not think of immediately blocking the line of national security and buying time for the redeployment of the rear, but hurriedly led the troops to retreat, and as a result, he successively lost Nandan, Hechi, Qingyuan, Luocao, Liucheng and other important places leading to Liuzhou, so that Shao Jiugong had to hurriedly deploy the battle of Liuzhou. Due to the rush and unfavorable situation of the battle, the new battle plan was much worse than the original. (To be continued.) )